Gun Violence & Society

Americans love their guns, and as murder rates seem to have declined over the past few years, according to the August 8^th Huffington Post, at least in 2011 55% of us seemed to think gun control laws should remain the same or be more lenient. Sure we see other mass killings in other developed nations – the wanton murders of 77 people (many of them children) by a crazed bomber-gunman in Norway last summer for example – but the world has come to look to the United States as the global poster child for these anger killings. Oklahoma City (federal building), Columbine (high school), Aurora (movie theater), Oak Creek (Sikh temple), Tucson (political rally), Virginia Tech and Texas A&M… and the list goes on and on. If you don’t think that has an impact on tourism or the way the rest of the world perceives us, think again.

If you want a gun, but a background check scares you or if you know your past would prevent such a registered purchase, there are lots of states where you don’t even have to present an ID if you want to buy a weapon legally… from a non-dealer at a gun show (so-called “private sales”). I’ve blogged how such weapons are flowing like a river to the drug cartels in Mexico (some of those cartels bring those firearms back up here to enhance their growing market controls) and gangs in the United States. Semi-automatic assault weapons that are designed to kill people, lots of people.

“About 260 million to 300 million firearms are owned by civilians in the United States; about one-third of American homes have one. Guns are used in two-thirds of homicides, according to the FBI. About 9 percent of all violent crimes involve a gun – roughly 338,000 cases each year… More than 73,000 emergency room visits in 2010 were for firearm-related injuries, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.” Huffington Post.

Aside from nearly ubiquitous access, experts ask, does such gun violence need to be addressed at a bigger level – particularly these mass killings – as a serious social disease? “The need for a new approach crystallized [August 5^th] for one of the nation's leading gun violence experts, Dr. Stephen Hargarten. He found himself treating victims of the Sikh temple shootings at the emergency department he heads in Milwaukee. Seven people were killed, including the gunman, and three were seriously injured.

“‘What I'm struggling with is, is this the new social norm? This is what we're going to have to live with if we have more personal access to firearms,’ said Hargarten, emergency medicine chief at Froedtert Hospital and director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. ‘We have a public health issue to discuss. Do we wait for the next outbreak or is there something we can do to prevent it?’” Huffington Post. This issue has been with us for a while, and although we have laws and public safety requirements based on car crash research, America seems to be devoid of any efforts to address this mega-killer of Americans every year.

“Dr. David Satcher tried to make gun violence a public health issue when he became CDC director in 1993. Four years later, laws that allow the carrying of concealed weapons drew attention when two women were shot at an Indianapolis restaurant after a patron’s gun fell out of his pocket and accidentally fired. Ironically, the victims were health educators in town for an American Public Health Association convention…That same year, Hargarten won a federal grant to establish the nation's first Firearm Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin… ‘Unlike almost all other consumer products, there is no national product safety oversight of firearms,’ he wrote in the Wisconsin Medical Journal.”

What can be done? Here are a few examples cited in the Huffington Post:

One recent study found firearm owners were more likely than those with no firearms at home to binge drink or to drink and drive, and other research has tied alcohol and gun violence. That suggests that people with driving under the influence convictions should be barred from buying a gun…

Which firearms are most dangerous and why. Manufacturers could be pressured to fix design defects that let guns go off accidentally, and to add technology that allows only the owner of the gun to fire it (many police officers and others are shot with their own weapons). Bans on assault weapons and multiple magazines that allow rapid and repeat firing are other possible steps…

What conditions allow or contribute to shootings[?] Gun shops must do background checks and refuse to sell firearms to people convicted of felonies or domestic violence misdemeanors, but those convicted of other violent misdemeanors can buy whatever they want. The rules also don't apply to private sales, which one study estimates as 40 percent of the market…

Gun ownership – a precursor to gun violence – can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates," said Daniel Webster, a health policy expert and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore.

Maybe we shouldn’t care. Maybe we should just leave it alone, but something tells me if we cannot stop the flow of weapons, at least we should be approaching the issues with some common sense. And yes, “guns kill people.” Sorry NRA – the organization that has got politicians from all sides nervously stuttering when they utter the words “gun control” – but there are way too many innocent victims who would be alive today if your power to curtain common sense weren’t as great as it is. Look at the photo above. Really look at it. Do you feel any empathy for these folks who have lost family? What exactly are you going to do about it?

I’m Peter Dekom, and why do conservative politicians feel so bad about preventing killings of those already born into this world when they fight so hard to prevent abortion even under the most strenuous of circumstances?